X2 mill air spring installed

[dgjessing]

A few weeks ago LMI's special of the week was their #2258 "Economy Air Spring Kit" - I went for it. I didn't really have any problem with the operation of the stock torsion spring gizmo, but the longer rack sounded good. So this afternoon I got around to installing it. I followed their instructions (almost) to the letter, and things went mostly according to plan. Ran into a problem upon installing the strut in the column - with the supplied hardware my strut rubbed against the back of the column casting. I fixed this by using a somewhat longer bolt at the bottom of the strut, and placing a spacer (about 1/4") on it to hold it out (more towards the center of the column) a bit. Happily, adding the spacer did not screw anything else up and the strut moves up and down just fine. The rack is a little tight - I don't know if the new one is a little thicker or what, but I'm hoping it will work itself in soon. I left out the new mounting hole for the upper limit bumper - I will make a new thingie to stop it right at the top of the column. That's another 1" + of travel (up) right there, and there is probably an additional 2 or 3 inches of downward travel. In all, I've now got about 10 3/8" of Z axis travel. The quill comes to within 1 1/4" of the table. I'm pretty happy over-all ;D

 

[Troutsqueezer]

For most x2 owners the head drops a few millimeters or more every time it is loosened using the captive lever. The air lift fixes this. Guess you were lucky if that was not a problem for you.

 

[rleete]

You can drill the hole for the spring about 2.5" lower than the plans, and that gives you that much more travel. Nice for using collets, where you don't have a lot sticking out of the spindle.